I don't own it...just wanted to do this for fun! Hope you enjoy
Prologue
February 2005
Is love at first sight truly possible? Sitting in his living room, Edward turned the question over in his mind for what seemed to be the hundredth time. Outside, the winter sun had long since set. A grayish sheen of fog was visible though the window, and aside from the gentle tap of a branch against the glass, all was quiet. Yet he wasn't alone, and he pulled himself up from his spot on the couch and walked down the hall to peek in on her. As he started, he thought about lying beside her, if only to have an excuse to shut his eyes. He could use the rest, but didn't want to risk falling asleep just yet. Instead he watched as she shifted slightly, his mind drifting to the past. He thought again about the path that had brought them together. Who was he then? And who he now? On the surface, those questions seemed easy. His name was Edward; he was forty-two years old, the son of an Irish father and Italian mother; and he wrote magazine articles for a living. Those were answers he would offer when asked. Through they were true, he sometimes wondered whether he should add something more. Should he mention, for instance, that he'd traveled to Washington five years ago to investigate a mystery? That he fell in love there, not once but twice that year? Or that the beauty of those memories was intertwined with sadness and that even now he questioned which memories would endure?
He turned away from the bedroom doorway and returned to the living room. Thought he didn't dwell on those events from long ago, he didn't avoid thinking about them, either. He could no more erase that chapter of his life than he change his birthday. While there were times when he wished he could roll back the clock and erase all the sadness, he had a hunch that if he did so, the joy would diminished as well. And that was something he couldn't contemplate.
It was the darkest hours of the night that he most often found himself remembering his night with Bella in the cemetery, the night he'd seen the ghostly lights that he'd come from New York to investigate. It was then, however, that he'd realized for the first time how much Bella meant to him. As they waited in the blackness of the cemetery, Bella told him a story about herself. She'd been orphaned as a young child she explained. Edward had already known that, but what he didn't know was that she'd begun having nightmares a few years after the death of her parents. Terrible, recurring nightmares in which she witnessed the death of her parents. Her grandmother Marie, not knowing what else to do, finally brought her to he cemetery to see the mysterious lights. To a young child, the lights were miraculous, heavenly, and Bella instantly recognized them as the ghost of her parents. It was, somehow, what she'd needed to believe, and those nightmares never plagued her again.
Edward had been touched by her story, moved by her loss and power of innocent beliefs. But later that night after he too had seen the lights, he'd asked Bella what she thought they really were. She'd leaned forward and whispered, "It was my parents. They probably wanted to meet you."
It was then he knew he wanted to take her in his arms. He'd long since pinpointed that as the moment he first fell in love with her, and he'd never stopped loving her.
Outside, the February wind picked up again. Beyond the murky darkness, he could see nothing, and he lay down on the couch with a weary sigh, feeling the pull of the year draw him backward in time. He could have forced the images away, but as he stared at the ceiling, he let them come. He always let hem come.
This, he remembered, is what happened next...